Thanks to British lobbying, a proposed 55% cut in the tonnage of haddock caught in the Celtic Sea was reduced to 15%, while off other parts of the British coast, plaice, sole, scampi, whiting and herring quotas were increased, though the stocks are at a tiny fraction of their historic levels. All our main commercial species are constantly teetering on the edge of ecological collapse, as the industry fishes right up to and often beyond the point at which they can sustain even their desperately depleted numbers.

All this was accompanied by what the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) called "another major success, achieved during the first day of negotiations, when the UK successfully stopped a cut in the number of days that fishermen are allowed to spend fishing at sea". The cut was to have been a central feature of the EU's cod recovery plan. Defra boasts that it "overturned this agreement". Another triumph for British diplomacy, seeing off the dark forces of science and reason.

The minister responsible, Richard Benyon, describes this idiocy as "the best possible deal for the UK fishing industry". For 2013 perhaps. And the worst possible deal for its future prospects, let alone for the health of our marine ecosystems.

The chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, Bertie Armstrong, who plainly has a lively sense of humour, called it "a good outcome based on the science". To show how badly this industry has been rolled up in its own nets, he added that "the decision [by the EU] to set our overall share of the mackerel at the traditional level was also a sensible move."

Again and again over the past few decades, our fishing industry has clamoured noisily to cut its own throat, then responded with astonishment and fury when it collapses as a result. Is there a clearer example of being blinded to your long-term interests by short-term greed?

All this has been accompanied by the government's failure to establish the 127 marine conservation zones it promised, and even more astonishing refusal to exclude industrial activities (principally commercial fishing) from any of the 31 it deigns to designate. (I'll write about this next week). The fishing industry - principally the owners of the biggest industrial trawlers - is the only interest this government will heed. It too is gambling with extinction.